Henry M. Baird · 43 of 379

CHAPTER I · Fall of Cardinal Balue.

Cardinal Balue was not slow in finding means to remove from office the intrepid Procureur-général, who had been prominent in urging parliament to resist the measure of repeal. But Saint-Romain's bold stand had confirmed both parliament and university, and neither body would acquiesce in the papal demands. Louis, however, was reconciled to a second abandonment of the scheme by the opportune discovery of the cardinal's treachery. The unhappy prelate met with deserved retribution, for his purple did not save him from enduring his own favorite mode of punishment, and being shut up in a great iron cage. The new Perillus was thus enabled—to the intense satisfaction of many whom he had wronged—to test in his own person the merits of a contrivance which he was reputed himself to have invented.

A concordat subsequently agreed upon by Louis and the Pope fared no better than the previous compacts. Parliament and university were resolute, and the king, having no further advantage to gain by keeping his word, was as careless in its fulfilment as was his wont. The Pragmatic Sanction was still observed as the law of the land. The highest civil courts, ignoring the alleged repeal, conformed their decisions to its letter and spirit, while the theologians of the Sorbonne taught it as the foundation of the ecclesiastical constitution of France. Yet, public confidence in its validity having been shaken, it was desirable to set all doubts at rest by a formal re-enactment. This was proposed by the Dean of St. Martin of Tours, in the States General held during the minority of Charles the Eighth; but, notwithstanding the well-known opinion of all the orders, this reign passed without the adoption of any decided action.